The Far Reaches

By Larry Kennedy

A lone spacecraft finds a derelict space vessel and finds a mystery aboard that, after the Earth's destruction, will have far-reaching consequences.

 

Larry was born and raised in Ohio, served in the United States Air Force, and now resides in West Virginia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TOPLINK PUBLISHING, LLC
• Release date: Jul 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781947620018

Larry Kennedy

Larry was born and raised in Ohio, served in the United States Air Force, and now resides in West Virginia.

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THE FAR REACHES

Larry Kennedy

Copyright © 2017 by Larry Kennedy.

Paperback: 978-1-947620-00-1

eBook: 978-1-947620-01-8

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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Contents

PROLOGUE: History

CHAPTER 1: AD 2331, the Present

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

INTERLUDE: May 16, 2351 and The Intervening Years

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

EPILOGUE

TO MY WIFE, PARENTS, GRANDPARENTS, AND STEPDAUGHTER, WHO BELIEVED IN ME WHEN I DIDN’T BELEIVE IN MYSELF.

PROLOGUE

History

Earth had survived. Warfare had become obsolete by the middle of the twenty-­first century. A United Earth Government had risen in the wake of the fall of totalitarian and fully democratic regimes as well as the reform of religion after a major conflict in the early part of the twenty­-first century. Finally, the needs of all people were being met and dealt with by the new government, and the age ­old problems that had plagued mankind for millennia--­­­hunger, overpopulation, and unemployment­­­--were being addressed.

The new government put people to work, building factories and equipment geared to the production of spacecraft, survival gear and the raw materials necessary to building worker’s accommodations, orbiting factory ships and ship construction facilities, and then the permanent colonies in which the people of Earth would be moved to the planets of the solar system to build new lives, farms, and mines. The limitless resources of the solar system would be tapped, finally enabling man to reach out beyond his cosmic cradle, to reach the stars beyond. Technology would advance in leaps and bounds, and discoveries that had eluded man for centuries would finally be made.

In 2122, five long-range starships were built to travel to the nearest star. The test ship, MARE TRANQUILITIS, discovered a crashed ship on the surface of Titan in 2126 then a new planet, Nirvana, beyond Pluto in 2127. Come 2128, she came upon Minerva, the eleventh planet, orbited by nine moons, one of which contained an ancient abandoned base and another wrecked ship.

The MARE TRANQUILITIS was recalled in 2139 when a breakthrough occurred in drive technology. A new series of ships was put into construction, and the five starships were labeled obsolete and relegated to hauling freight in the sol system, as well as scientists and materials to the two new planets, and returning samples to Earth and Mars.

On February 13, 2157, the first frontier scout, STARDANCE, launched from the construction facility at Mare Chronium City on Mars, the first attempt at hypervelocity research and practical carried a crew of seventeen with a set destination for the Proxima Centauri star system. Her arrival at the set destination in just three days and subsequent return after a brief survey there were milestones in history. Construction of more frontier scouts and orbital shipbuilding facilities began. New vessel types were laid out, furthering man’s odyssey into the universe: survey starships, colony ships, agricultural ships, and long­-range freighters, shuttles, and repair ships. Men, equipment, and their tools headed to the stars.

Many discoveries were made on the planets of man’s own solar system by miners and colonists as they explored their newly adopted home worlds. New metals and minerals, new medicinal supplies, and fossilized life-­forms were discovered throughout the solar system; and the surprises kept coming.

The STARDANCE brought back more information from her second voyage to the Centauri system, one which lasted for two years. Four planets had been discovered there, three of which contained advanced plant life and one that contained primitive lower life-­forms far exotic than anything man had ever dreamed of. The fourth planet had a few ancient crumbling structures that have been abandoned for millennia. A somber discovery that had seen freighters and a survey starship loaded with equipment and archeologists and scientists on their way to try to unravel the mysteries of the newly discovered solar system.

At home on Earth, nuclear and neutronic power had reached new and more advanced levels of implementation and utilization. Major pulse reactors were located over the face of Earth and at the new underwater colonies beneath the world’s vast oceans. The reactors were all linked via reaction lines and relays that tied the reactors together, providing power for the entire world far more efficiently and cleanly than any of man’s previous endeavors in the field of nuclear research. Clean nuclear power and solar power energized the world, doing away with most pollution and giving Earth a chance to breathe freely of clean air once again. What little waste there was remaining was hauled into space and sent into the sun to burn up. With most of man’s industry located in the enormous orbiting factory ships, Earth’s cleanup had proceeded well.

By 2186, thirty­-one frontier scouts combed the nearby cosmos in an ever­-expanding spiral, of the galaxy, making discoveries, and relaying unimagined amounts of information back home. This information would guide the new survey starships to more thoroughly examine the passing discoveries of the frontier scouts. Depending upon what was discovered, there was the possibility of an EXODUS LINER, a colonist’s vessel loaded with scientists, miners, and colonists, being dispatched along with agricultural vessels, freighters, and shuttles. Long-range freighters kept the far-­ranging frontier scouts stocked with supplies and changed crews when necessary. Long­-range shuttles ferried artifacts and information back to Earth and then returned with fresh supplies and equipment.

Come 2294, man had reached as far as seventy light-­years from home with colonies and perhaps four times that distance with the frontier scouts. The fourteen scouts had found several star systems with the remains of long-abandoned civilizations but no intelligent life-forms. They did discover exotic and weird plants and lower life­-forms in the hundreds.

This would be a mystery that, like so many others, would have a truly strange answer. It would turn out that man knew not nearly as much as he thought and believed he did as the frontier scouts and the survey starships probed the heavens, and man continually blundered with his home world.

And there were unknown dangers lurking in the vast depths of space as frontier scout NT­ 0017, the MOONMIST, discovered. She was the first of man’s vessels to be destroyed, and the incident was through sheer carelessness.

Until the disaster, man had become complacent about his travels, never before having encountered any type of hidden danger. This was a lesson hard learned, and humanity took the news and subsequent shock quite hard after the ship’s log buoy had been recovered. Those plying the starways started to pay much closer attention to what they were doing and where they were at.

The Moonmist had successfully charted and logged more than a hundred worlds and even been one of the first of man’s vessels to reach beyond the known heavens. Her crews were competent researchers and experts in their fields, who, through lack of adversity during their time in space, had slackened in their closeness of examining phenomena around them.

Through an innocuous­ looking cloud in space. The crew, having experience with nebular navigation, never tried to avoid it. Several hours after passage, things began to come apart. The crew discovered far too late that in the cloud lived some form of metal-­eating organism that had infiltrated the vessel through the excess radiation bleed­-off vents of her star-­drive system. The organisms thoroughly wrecked the engines, multiplied and mutated, and spread throughout the remainder of the vessel and its systems. In a matter of a few days, little remained.

A long-­range freighter responded to the garbled distress call that had suddenly ceased. When they found the wreckage, only some of the ship’s skeletal structure work remained, along with a few sections of bulkheads and decks. The freighter downloaded the information in the log buoy by remote computer to keep from physically handling it then destroyed it. Close-range examination of the wreckage revealed the remains of her decompressed crew all huddled in the forward science station in the scout’s bow.

There was a week’s mourning for the crew of the lost ship, and then it was back to business as usual for everyone although much more cautiously.

By 2312, man had established his foothold and had operational bases throughout the Orion spur and had begun exploration of the space between the spur and the Sagittarius arm of the galaxy. During this time, several frontier scouts and freighters went missing; but because of the immensity of the galaxy, it was said by some to be expected and acceptable. Man was becoming complacent again but not only in his travels.

In one of the remaining production facilities on Earth, where the vital links and relay systems of the reaction lines were manufactured, the same age-­old enemy was making itself known.

The sections of the reaction lines handled upward of four hundred thousand gigawatts of power and reaction per second. A weak link was something that had to be avoided at all costs for obvious reasons. The lines and their safety backups were vital to prevent escaping energy from starting critical mass reactions and sending energy backlashes through the system.

A daydreaming worker stood behind his inspection boards, his mind and thoughts roaming the spaceways, totally oblivious to what was happening around him. A red light flashed on, indicating a fault with the fail­safe units and for the interior core work. He totally failed to notice or observe the warning lights. Unit 703,846 passed on as the quality assurance supervisor had gone for a coffee break, fully relying on the skill and dedication of the production worker; he had never caught the faults either. In a matter of eight days’ time, unit 703,846 was interchanged with an older unit and put into a vital high-­power linkage center. The recipe for disaster was complete.

But then, considering the history of humankind, that was a very well­-known and well-used recipe.

CHAPTER 1

AD 2331, the Present

It was one of those times. Frontier scout NT­ 0012, LORIMAR, was supposed to be en route to Aberon ix­­­-well, she was technically en route. She was crawling along at sublight velocity because of yet another major equipment failure. She was one hundred and sixty-­nine years old and had gone through probably as many overhauls and refits as her various crews over the years had had socks and uniforms. But then, very little seemed to last forever, especially under hard continuous use. Aside from all the various refits, she was on about her twentieth name as each crew renamed their vessel. At the moment, her engineering officer was tempted to call her many things, the least offensive of which was trouble.

Tony Floyd was forty-­seven, balding, and rapidly losing his temper. The power­-reaction control units on both star drivers had blown out, and from the look of things, they would never function again. For six years Tony had managed to keep the bucket of bolts together with a lot of curses and good luck. Apparently, the luck had run out. The reaction units were in pieces, burnt, and scattered all over the engine room. As a last attempt, he tried to substitute a mirror for one of the destroyed parts.

Upon insertion, the main panel for engine one lit up, flared, made some unhealthy noises, then went wild. The ship pitched and lurched, and then all went quiet for a moment. Tony looked on in bewilderment, silently praying. Then hell broke loose.

The crystal disc power rack shot out sparks and began to crack and pop as wild energy fluxes wreaked utter havoc with the power crystal discs, blowing them clear out of the rack, as main circuit panels began to blow and smoke began to issue from just about every opening in the engine room.

Warning Klaxons warbled and wailed, lights flashed, and the computer voiced its warning in its pleasant, falsely cheerful voice, Warning, engine failure may occur without proper maintenance. Please remember to follow all safety precautions to prevent any possible accidents.

Bits and pieces were now flying all about the chamber, and sparks flew from the engine housings and circuit boxes along the bulkheads. The computer came on again.

Warning, engine failure may occur . . .

No kidding! screamed Tony as he ran from the pandemonium, looking for safety and cover­ ­­anywhere.

There is the possibility of a malfunction, droned the computer, seemingly oblivious to the maelstrom going on about it.

Shut up, you damn heap of junk, roared Tony, and do something to help for heaven’s sake!

It is now time for a life­-pod drill. Please retract landing gear before flushing latrine. Probe launch sequence must be observed. It seemed the computer was having a bad day as well.

Tony stood in the middle of the engine room and threw his toolkit at the babbling and squawking computer speaker grid and tried to decide whether to laugh, cry, or just program the self­-destruct mechanism. But then, he mused cynically, the computer would probably only give him a cup of green coffee if he was lucky. It appeared that the whole system had finally crashed.

His com link signaled as pieces continued to become airborne. Tony, this is Cory. What is going on down there?

Tony glowered at the com link, trying to decide just which antisocial remark to make. Cory, you could get off your backside and call space­-traffic control to come down here and attempt to track all these damn flying parts! he finished, winding himself up for a further tirade; but Cory cut him short, having heard it all before.

Look, Tony, we have got to have power to those star drivers! And the rest of the ship for that matter. I have no idea what you’ve done this time, but we have no power at all, not even to the sublight drive. Now move yourself and get something rigged up down there! Bridge out!

Get something rigged up, my backside, stormed Tony, throwing his com link at the bulkhead and wishing it were someone’s neck. Tony, fix this, Tony, fix that, Tony rig this up, Tony patch that up--­­­this bucket of bolts ought to be in a blasted museum or better yet in a junkyard! He looked around balefully as the pandemonium finally began to subside. Rig something. How about a detonator? Rig something . . . shit!

For Tony Floyd and the LORIMAR, it was indeed one of those days. Tony debated about informing the rest of the crew of the truth that, in reality, he was no engineer, just a cook.

Shortly, the other four members of the LORIMAR crew were gathered in the engine room, surveying the damage. Tony wanted to crawl under something and hide. The engine room was an absolute shambles, and the LORIMAR was now operating on emergency power cells. Definitely not the best of situations. The power cells could last up to six months, but there was no engine power, which left the LORIMAR drifting.

The ship’s commander, Mariah Nein, looked upon the scene of devastation, not altogether unpleased. This current disaster was a problem long overdue. Tony, you did your best. We’ve been due a new set of star drivers for over three years. Now maybe Scout Command will do something with this relic. Those Serpo-­dyne engines are the original equipment from when this baby was brand-­new almost a hundred and seventy years ago. They only had a life expectancy of fifty years. I’d say they more than paid for themselves. The same goes for the main computer system. It should have been replaced twenty-­years ago.

Does that mean we may finally get some leave time? asked Tony.

Yeah, not like we aren’t due any, replied Mariah. "The repair freighter BELMONT is only about a week away. We managed to contact her and a deep­-space prospector, the ANDRAGORA, before the main power failed. By now, they’ll be on their way. The ANDRAGORA can do little but keep us company, but she’ll be here late tomorrow."

How will they find us if we’re drifting?

The beacon will lead them here.

Oh no, moaned Tony. What if there happens to be some aliens that pick up the beacon and find us first?

For heaven’s sake, Tony, groaned Cory, you and your xenophobia! What aliens? Why do we go through this every time the deep-­space transmitter is used? We have yet to find any aliens out here!

That doesn’t mean that they aren’t listening and watching, argued Tony.

Mariah laughed. "Knock it off, you two.